The nominations for this year's British Comedy Awards have been announced with them, unsurprisingly, being dominated by Ricky Gervais's Extras. And with only a couple of other shows having made any impact over the last year the nominations are tightly overlapped and reads out like a game of word association.

Matt Lucas and David Walliams are fighting to retain last year's wins for Best TV Comedy for Little Britain and their Best TV Comedy Actor. This year they are up against Extras and The Catherine Tate Show, and Ricky Gervais and Chris Langham (Help and The Thick of It) in those respective categories.

Catherine Tate has another chance of getting an industry nod as she is hopefully upgrading last year's Best Newcomer win for Best TV Comedy Actress but has to go against Tamsin Greig (Love Soup) and Ashley Jensen (Extras) who is also up for The Best Newcomer award.

Also vying for that particular prize are David Mitchell (FAQ U) and Chris 'Always The Bridesmaid' Addison (The Thick Of It) who seems to be getting nominated for everything at the moment but coming away with nothing. Addison was in the Edinburgh Fringe Perrier nominations for the second year running and the bookies' favourite but was beaten to the post both years.

Maybe he'll be contented with an 'award by association' as The Thick Of It is in the Best New TV Comedy nominations along with Help but also the heavyweight Extras. That makes it a grand total of five potential awards for Gervais's new show. No wonder he's already got another two series lined up for the future.

The Best Comedy Drama combatants are Christmas Lights (Robson Green), Not Only But Always (Rhys Ifans in the Peter Cook biopic) and Shameless (Channel 4's dysfunctional Mancunian family).

The Best Comedy Film nominations are, in my opinion, indicative of either a slow year or an eccentric selection process. The shortlist for the 'best' funny films are the Edinburgh Fringe film, Festival, Pixar's The Incredibles and the self-indulgent, mid-life crises, road trip film, Sideways (which was about as funny as a root canal).

Of course we give the foreigners their own special opportunity to air their fairs with the Best International Show award. The Simpsons are defending their win from last year against the US version of One Foot In The Grave, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Australia's, Kath & Kim.

Then there are the Best Entertainment Programme, and Best Comedy Entertainment Personality categories with Ant & Dec defending both titles from 2004 against Jonathan Ross in for a shot for each and X-Factor and Paul O'Grady making up the numbers.

The British Comedy Awards will be aired on December 14th on ITV1.